Spaghetti with Butter and Ice Cream

I spent about half of today in bed. I'm not sick or anything. I was merely recharging. It was nice. Then I got hungry, and so began the other half of today. I thought I might go to a restaurant in town. What actually wound up happening was I walked around the city for hours unable to make up my mind on where to eat. I then sat in a coffee shop for about an hour reading up on JavaScript drawing libraries. You'd think I would have bought myself a snack while I was at it, but I didn't. I eventually headed back home to make some spaghetti with butter, Romano cheese, and a touch of freshly-ground black pepper. It was quite good. Simple food is often the most satisfying. And now for some ice cream!

Courts Are Using AI to Sentence Criminals. That Must Stop Now - Consider a scenario in which the defense attorney calls a developer of a neural-network-based risk assessment tool to the witness stand to challenge the “high risk” score that could affect her client’s sentence. On the stand, the engineer could tell the court how the neural network was designed, what inputs were entered, and what outputs were created in a specific case. However, the engineer could not explain the software’s decision-making process. (Wired)

'Haunted' High School Reduced to Rubble in Lambertville - The skeleton of the former Lambertville High School has been demolished, allaying fears that a Halloween thrill-seeker would be hurt trespassing on the reputedly haunted site. The structure was knocked down in one day, "which shows you how bad it was," city construction official Ken Rogers said today. (NJ.com, 2012)

The Case Against Tipping - A recent study found that attractive servers earned $1,261 more in tips per year than unattractive ones. Worse, tipping is a vehicle for customers’ prejudices to infiltrate into pay. Gender and race influence the size of tips; black servers are tipped less, and a study in 2011 found that for anything less than “exceptional service”, women’s tips were smaller. (The Economist, 2015)